


26

by palaces_outofparagraphs



Series: after laughter [10]
Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: Birthday, Gen, last piece in the series yall, the girls celebrating their birthdays all at once on the same day, the girls my girls, the girls surviving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-07
Updated: 2017-10-07
Packaged: 2019-01-10 01:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12288525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palaces_outofparagraphs/pseuds/palaces_outofparagraphs
Summary: against all odds, the girls turn 26.





	26

 

Against every odd in the universe, the girls turn twenty six.

They’ve all always collectively thought it was ironic that Spencer is the youngest of them all, her birthday in the early days of December, just when you’re getting used to the frost but before the dark winter mood that it’s going to be cold forever. Because Spencer has always seemed the oldest, the most collected, except when she was in a million different pieces. But this year, twenty six - ten years after it all began, ten years after they were the age of those first dangerous text messages on their little flip phones - it seems perfect, seems fitting, seems real, and they decide to hold off on celebration until it’s her birthday, and then all celebrate together.

She gets home three days before her birthday. All four girls come to pick up her and Toby from the airport, and she flies into their arms at the terminal, all of them crying at once. It feels like law school graduation all over again but better. It feels like home. In those moments, clinging to all her friends at once, Rosewood feels more like home than it ever has.

Aria drives them all home, and they all pile onto Spencer’s sofa and spend all night talking, about Europe, about London and Paris and Shakespeare and everything Spencer missed when she was gone. (Toby retreats to his woodworking shed, and the sounds of sawing and hammering drift out all night. Spencer suspects that he missed wood more than he missed any other aspect of home, including his parents.) The twins are almost four, beautiful little children who can speak understandably almost all the time; and Ashlynne has taken to asking regularly for Auntie Spence.

Spencer cries when she hears it. She actually cries for a lot of the evening, but that’s okay. It’s good.

“God, we all missed you, though,” says Emily when they reach a lull in conversation. The bottle of wine is half empty on the coffee table. They are still draped over the couch, Ali leaning into Emily’s arms, Aria curled onto Spencer’s shoulder, Hanna cross legged on the armrest. They could be in high school. They could be teenagers. They could have survived. In this moment, with her friends curled up around her, Spencer has the most peculiar feeling that she did survive. That they all survived. “We were so scared you were never going to come back.”

Alison swats her. “Em!”

“Well, we were!” insists Emily, even as they all laugh, even as she laughs, her face breaking apart in pure, simple joy that Spencer feels a jolt of surprise every time she sees, even now. This simple, pure joy was so absent from Emily’s dark, worried eyes for so many years, that even now, even now, it is beautiful to see her in a moment of laughter - unadulterated happiness.

There was so much pain for all of them, throughout everything. But sometimes Spencer remembers Emily, sixteen years old in the hospital with an ulcer, and she wishes that any doctor at that hospital would have recommended a good therapist, for Emily, if for none of the rest. All the way from the beginning, Emily took all of it straight to her chest.

“I’d always come back for you guys,” says Spencer, reaching for Em’s hand and squeezing. “I’d never leave you guys.” And sitting there, she can’t fathom how she ever considered it.

Near dawn, the girls pile back into Aria’s car to go home, but Emily lingers, as Ali and Hanna and Aria all drift outside, gathering their coats and bags and calling out to each other and laughing.

“I really did think you weren’t going to come home,” says Emily after a moment of silence between them. The early threads of morning are just breaking over the horizon, and Spencer thinks that even after everything she has seen, there is a special, exquisite beauty in sunrise over her hometown.

“I’d always come home,” Spencer says again. She looks at Emily more closely then, at Emily’s sweet, soft face. There are worry lines etched where there shouldn’t be, but now there are laugh lines too, rising in gentle, noble slopes, marking her face like a warrior’s stripes. Emily, always taking everything straight to her chest. Emily, Ali’s favorite, thinking all the while it was all her fault. Emily, who suffered the most in those five, long years where they were sprawled in different corners of the world. Emily, who, Spencer thinks, saw the good in Toby long before she did. Emily, who sees the good in everyone.

Emily, the one who always understood best what it was to come back home.

“I saw Mona,” says Spencer without even thinking about it, without planning on it for a moment. She knows Emily will never tell. Emily has always known better than any of them how to keep a secret. “In a bakery in Paris.”

Emily nods, as if she understands, as if she was expecting it all along. “Is that why you came home?”

Spencer tips her head back. “We all used to think that if we got out, we would be free,” she says softly. “I think you were the first one to figure out that that’s not how it works… you knew you had to come home.” She smiles, even though it doesn’t make any sense to. “Fitting that I would be the last.”

Emily laughs for a heartbeat, snakes her arm around Spencer and squeezes tight. “Had to beat you at something, Hastings,” she says quietly, and they’re both laughing, and they both made it, curled on Spencer’s couch as the dawn breaks over the horizon.

\--

So, they turn twenty six, even though none of them ever thought they would. They ring in all five of their birthdays on Spencer’s, spending the whole day together like Christmas, because they are all alive, ten years after it all began, and it feels like the biggest thing they’ve had to celebrate for the entire decade. They exchange presents and go to brunch, spend hours wandering their favorite stores and getting each other whatever they want, drive through all their old haunts, have a four-hour birthday spa, go to an outrageously fancy dinner, and then, because it feels fitting, they end up in Spencer’s barn with a bottle of something they can now legally drink and five glasses.

It feels like holy ground, like an untouchable site, like a monument, but Spencer’s made it into a home. And that in itself feels the most fitting thing of all.

They toast to themselves.

“We made it,” says Spencer. “I didn’t think we would make it, but we did.”

“I’ll drink to that,” says Hanna, tipping her wine glass back. They don’t laugh quite so much this time, sipping in silence, feeling the heaviness of the ten years they lived through settling into their bones.

They don’t talk about it, but in a different, clearer way, they feel the heaviness drifting up, through the windows and floating through the night, gone, maybe not forever, but certainly for the night.

  
  


The End

**Author's Note:**

> last piece in the collection, love yall sososo much for reading <333 keep an eye out for upcoming story probably soonish, centering around potential spoby wedding?? but we'll see. seriously tho thanks so much for the kudos/comments/bookmarks - they mean so much to me, i hope you liked reading this as much as i loved writing it!


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